Tuesday, 15 December 2009

Messing around with The Toy

Horse Racing

Unit stake: £2/£8

Session P&L: £10.69

Average market P&L: £1.07

Racing Bank at end of session: £94.09

Unit stake for next session (10%): £9.41

Today was a day of experimentation, I only used The Toy and started with £2 stakes to get a feel for it at first. As with the last post I will include today's result into my racing bank, as I would like my stakes to increase sooner rather than later. After the first four markets I was feeling very comfortable with the software and increased my stakes to £5-£8 as things continued to go well. This has added to my confidence and I will continue to use The Toy along with Bet Angel. The fewer charting options and market overview are planned to be included in an upcoming release, this is great news as I feel without these features my market awareness is slightly limited. This might also just be a reflection of how accustomed I am to using BA. I think it is fair to say though that BAs charting options are second to none at the moment.

However the good points are plentiful with TT. The custom layouts and almost endless array of options are really impressive. I do pay a lot of attention to details and these options have allowed me to make many little changes that for me make all the difference. You are even able to edit the font formatting and cell size on the ladder (I found this particularly useful in prioritising information, for instance putting info I want to stand out in bold and in larger cells etc.). I also find the financial bar layout on the ladder really useful. You can see by glancing at the ladder how the money waiting to be matched relates proportionally to the rest of the price bands. I could also spot abnormalities easily, like spoof money or relatively large orders. This is similar to the market depth shading which I mentioned in my previous post and also found useful. The speed of orders hitting the market also seems very fast with TT.

Probably one of the most important features that I forgot to mention last time, is the ability to add as many ladders as you wish. Although my two widescreens could accommodate more I have settled for eight (five more than before). If you order your book by price you have no surprises and will always have the top 8 in your sights. I still don't think this is a substitute for the overview feature mentioned, but with the overview included I could easily sacrifice a ladder or two and have everything I need at my disposal.

I also messed around a bit on a footy match in-running by placing orders well out of the money to ensure I didn't get matched. There is a countdown feature which shows you exactly how long before your order hits the market. This was a nice touch and the great thing here is that if after 5 seconds you change your mind you have the option to cancel it even before it has hit the market. Some great features which I'm sure an in-running trader would find very useful indeed.

I'll include a couple of screenshots below of my current racing layout if anyone wants to have a look. I am changing things around a lot so no doubt it will change again soon - I think I sense a bit of deja vous...

2 comments:

Thanks for the great blog! I was wondering what trading psychology books you ended up reading? I've read Mark Douglas' Trading in the Zone and am about to order Brett Steenbarger's Daily Trading Coach.

Hey Dan yeah the books were mainly written by Brett Steenbarger and Mark Douglas. I also found some other random material online. Personally I found Douglas' first book The Disciplined Trader more informative than his more famous Trading in the Zone. However Brett Steenbarger's Daily Trading Coach was the most effective for me.

jafitz sorry dude I approved all commetns and blogger decided to delete yours? The software on blogspot does do some strange things sometimes. Thanks for the kinds words though dude, I'll certainly try my best not to burn myself out!